Dennis Smith Jr. is shooting like 7.2% in his dunk contest career. What's the deal? Are his hands too small to hold on to the ball?

Diallo was awesome. That dunk over Shaq with his elbow hanging through the rim with the Superman undershirt was awesome. Just awesome.

And the first John Collins dunk was the second best of the night and got a [expletive] 40.

He jumped, grabbed the backboard on one side, dunked on the other side of the rim and only got 7 more points than Bridges who didn’t complete a dunk.

yeah, the 10-point scale is really a four-point scale.You missed your dunk? 7Your dunk was pretty good? 8Your dunk was excellent? 9Your dunk had Karl Towns out of his seat, mouth agape, his phone capturing it all on video? 10

It should be: You missed your dunk? 0You got your dunk in on the fourth try? Whatever the score would be if you made it the first time divided by 1.5.You got it in on your 2nd-3rd try? Whatever the score would be if you made it the first time divided by 1.25.and so on.

As awesome as LaVine/Gordon was, it was all 10s and they kept going and going and let's be real there was the dunk where Air Gordon took the ball from the mascot, pulled it under his thighs in a seated position in the air, and dunked the [expletive] out of the ball on the first try, and then there was every other dunk in that dunk contest. After that dunk it should have been like ok thanks for coming everyone good night, Air Gordon you win. But LaVine won because they gave his 9s a bunch of 10s. Oh well. I'm just glad the best dunker won last night. And Collins got to put on a freaking SHOW in the Rising Stars game.

Re: 33’s stars put people in the seats comment. Everybody isn’t Bill Simmons nor do they all want what Bill wants. Some people want a nice night a the ballpark at a baseball pace. Baseball needs to be good/better at that and not try to compete at the #starpowerexperience

Durant and LeBron kind of tormented Embiid last night, and it was awesome. KD getting the and-one in the lane early then jawing at Embiid. Then KD and LeBron taking turns relieving Embiid of the ball in the fourth quarter. KD telling the media Embiid "is gonna take over this league one day....once I'm done." I love Embiid, including the outsize personality and trolling guys like Drummond on social media after besting them in a game. But it's always fun when the ego-driven guy gets his lunch money taken by better players.

Man, these LeBron v MJ pieces in the media, they come up at the drop of a hat. LeBron makes it to another Finals: who's the GOAT? LeBron misses the playoffs: who's the GOAT? LeBron's team goes on a 4-8 run: who's the GOAT?

Ok so LeBron's Lakers, a team that's LeBron, some meh veterans like Rondo and Reggie Bullock, will miss the playoffs. How does that balance against...

1. The 2008-2009 Cavs team that won 66 games? That 09 Cavs team is tied for the 14th most wins in an NBA season, and the 2nd best player on the team was Mo Williams. Yet that team won the same amount of games as the Celtics the year before when the Celtics had three sure-fire HOFers--Allen, Pierce, KG--and a probable 4th (Rondo) in the starting five. No, LeBron didn't get a ring, he didn't even go to the Finals, because they lost the East Conf Finals to the Magic, in that weird series where LeBron, Mo and Delonte West played almost every minute of almost every game, and LeBron averaged like 36/8/8 but got nothing from anyone else on his team while Howard, Rashard Lewis, and Turkoglu was enough to be deeper than that Cavs team. It's an extraordinary individual season LeBron had, regular and playoffs, and he accomplished some stuff that year--taking a team of nobodies to 66 wins and the EC Finals--that Jordan did not.

That team outscored opponents by 14.8 points per 100 possessions, and in the non-LeBron minutes they were outscored by 7.9 per 100. If we were to assign a meaningful value to LeBron that season, just how valuable is he and in which seasons did Jordan teams have a similar gap?**

2. The 2006-2007 season. Outside LeBron, Varejao and Ilgauskas are the only two players with a positive Box Plus-Minus. LeBron takes them in the playoffs to: a sweep of the Wiz in a series that no game is really that close and LeBron leads his team to a sweep without being the leading scorer in any single game. Then a 4-2 series win--as underdog--against the Kidd/Jefferson/Vince Carter Nets, a series defined by defense. The Cavs win Game 6 by close to 20. Then they fall behind 2-0 in the Conf Finals to Detroit, again as an underdog, but they win the next four straight including another huge closeout win in Game 6 when LeBron plays almost every minute, shoots like crap but has mid-teens boards, 10 dimes IIRC, plays great D and the big three for Detroit combine for like 10-40 from the floor or something as LeBron runs all over the court and he takes a whole crew of bums to the Finals. And he's only 22. Jordan didn't make his first Finals until he was 27 and had Pippen. How does that season of LeBron's, in which he won no ring, stack up?

3. 2017 his team beat the Dubs in the Finals in the midst of a four-year run when people were saying it's not fair how good the Dubs are. They beat a 73-win team in the Finals. How does that compare to great Jordan years? Did Jordan ever face a team like that in the Finals and win?

I think stuff like how LeBron got that ring v GSW and also some of the Herculean efforts he put forth in some non-championship seasons add a lot of nuance to the "yeah but did LeBron ever do this thing that Jordan did?" questions that people love to ask when dismissing just how great LeBron has been. LeBron will never get Jordan's six rings, but there are a LOT of things LeBron has already accomplished that Jordan did not.

Jordan also did not exist in the age of the NBA CBA that maxed out player contracts so that teams would not be saddled with old guys making too much money on too-long deals. In today's NBA, does Pippen, kind of a malcontent at many times in his career, do a Kyrie and ask to leave? Does Rodman, always a loose cannon, get annoyed at something and ask for a trade after one year? Or does Barkley come to Chicago on a cheap 1-2 year deal because he wants a ring, thus, like LeBron's Heat and Curry's Dubs, diminishing the sheen on Jordan's trophy case?

Zero. Only Curry and Draymond Green have seasons with bigger on/off Pts/100 gaps. Six of the top ten all time are either Curry or CP3 seasons. We could talk all day about how underrated Curry is right now.

Even by modern day standards, Mo Cheeks averaged under a dozen points and only 6.7 APG. DJ was 15 points and 5 assists.Gail Goodrich 18 points and 4 assists.

Rondo averaged 10+ PPG, 8.4 APG, 1.7 STL/G, 4.8 RPG, shot 46% from the floor, only averaged 2.8 TO/G at the point and was a starter on a tam that in five years won a Championship, went to another Finals, and went to three more conference finals. If DJ gets in on worse stats because he was on an elite Celtics team, Rondo for sure gets in.